[postlink]http://newbestmotivator.blogspot.com/2009/07/truth-and-reconsilialiton-motivation.html[/postlink]
Mandela's post-apartheid, fully representational South African government confronted the dilemma that faces every nation emerging from a long period of savage violence. What attitude do you take toward the perpetrators, the people whose very existence intensifies bitterness and hatred in an already wounded society? What policies do you adopt to heal the nation?
To address this question, the South African government put into place a framework for the possibility of the integration of all aspects of society, and appointed Archbishop Desmon Tutu as its chairman. The Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) offered amnesty to individuals who were prepared to tell the whole truth, publicity, and could prove that their violent deeds had been politically motivated. If an individual close not to appear before the Commission, he or she agreed to be tried in conventional ways. Written into the South African contribution was the vision of the TRC: "a need for understanding, but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu (brotherhood) but not for victimization."
It might seen that Mandela's government took a huge risk by instituting the Truth Commission. After all the atrocities, wouldn't justice have to be served? Might not people otherwise take the law in their own hands? But the TRC appears to have been founded on another story, the story that we really are our central selves longing to connect, seeking a structure that supports us to dissolve the barriers. It seems, too, to have been predicted on the idea that when the all of all of us is out in the open, and our capacity to be with the way things are expands, communities will naturally evolve toward integration. The Truth Commission served as a framework for possibility whose results, as is always the case, were unpredictable.
More "truth" was revealed than anyone had imagined was hidden, coming to light by degrees throughout the proceedings of the TRC. As one story after another emerged, the dualistic definitions of victims and perpetrators shifted and new patterns were formed, deeper understandings, and perhaps the fundamental sense of connection that we were seeing on our visit. It was not uncommon, apparently, to see the perpetrators break down in tears as they described their actions to the very families they had violated.
As a young woman realized, having just heard a policeman tell how he had killed her mother: "The TRC was never supposed to be about justice; it's about the truth truth." The all of all of us. Designed to put the impulse for revenge at one remove and to bring forward the enemy as a human being, a part of US, it was a framework for the possibility of social transformation.
And, as Mandela said, the Truth Commission "helped us to move away from the past to concentrate on the present and the future." It left the society free to take the next step.
Mandela's post-apartheid, fully representational South African government confronted the dilemma that faces every nation emerging from a long period of savage violence. What attitude do you take toward the perpetrators, the people whose very existence intensifies bitterness and hatred in an already wounded society? What policies do you adopt to heal the nation?
To address this question, the South African government put into place a framework for the possibility of the integration of all aspects of society, and appointed Archbishop Desmon Tutu as its chairman. The Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) offered amnesty to individuals who were prepared to tell the whole truth, publicity, and could prove that their violent deeds had been politically motivated. If an individual close not to appear before the Commission, he or she agreed to be tried in conventional ways. Written into the South African contribution was the vision of the TRC: "a need for understanding, but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu (brotherhood) but not for victimization."
It might seen that Mandela's government took a huge risk by instituting the Truth Commission. After all the atrocities, wouldn't justice have to be served? Might not people otherwise take the law in their own hands? But the TRC appears to have been founded on another story, the story that we really are our central selves longing to connect, seeking a structure that supports us to dissolve the barriers. It seems, too, to have been predicted on the idea that when the all of all of us is out in the open, and our capacity to be with the way things are expands, communities will naturally evolve toward integration. The Truth Commission served as a framework for possibility whose results, as is always the case, were unpredictable.
More "truth" was revealed than anyone had imagined was hidden, coming to light by degrees throughout the proceedings of the TRC. As one story after another emerged, the dualistic definitions of victims and perpetrators shifted and new patterns were formed, deeper understandings, and perhaps the fundamental sense of connection that we were seeing on our visit. It was not uncommon, apparently, to see the perpetrators break down in tears as they described their actions to the very families they had violated.
As a young woman realized, having just heard a policeman tell how he had killed her mother: "The TRC was never supposed to be about justice; it's about the truth truth." The all of all of us. Designed to put the impulse for revenge at one remove and to bring forward the enemy as a human being, a part of US, it was a framework for the possibility of social transformation.
And, as Mandela said, the Truth Commission "helped us to move away from the past to concentrate on the present and the future." It left the society free to take the next step.